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DCLnews
Exclusive:
The
e-book era is here - despite reports to the contrary
The e-book
revolution is happening under our noses, but has gone largely unnoticed
by mainstream media...
A recent
edition of the New York Times ran a feature about how last year's
forecasts of an eBook era were premature. It quoted publishers and online
bookstores who said that only the very few best-selling electronic editions
have sold more than a paltry thousand copies, and most sell far fewer.
Only a handful of have generated enough revenue to cover the few hundred
dollars it costs to convert texts to digital formats.
The NY
Times pointed out that a year ago you would have been forgiven for thinking
the print book was about to go the way of the dinosaurs - such was the
hype surrounding eBooks. Jack Romanos, President of the Simon &
Schuster division of Viacom, for example, announced to the press: "We
believe the eBook revolution will have an impact on the book industry
as great as the paperback revolution." Now he says they were "too
early adapters" and that "we were the early birds who went
out to catch the early worms but there weren't many."
So was
the NY Times article right? Were last year's forecasts of an impending
eBook era too optimistic?
It all
depends on how you look at it.
The
Real eBook Revolution
In a statement
last week, DCL president Mark Gross said that the real eBook
revolution is not in the bestseller market, but in technical reference
manuals and educational materials.
"What
people forget is eBooks were going strong before they were called
eBooks and they went on to sweep into many aspects of business and publishing,"
he said. "Most of this has gone unnoticed by the media. Probably
because it has been a kind of back door revolution. To cite one example
- print law books are just about gone. People don't use them
in law firms anymore. It's all electronic books or online. A revolution
has occurred, but no-one's noticed."
eResearch
Tools
Clearly eBooks - in the sense of the commercial market - have yet to
take off. But what might best be described as ePublications -
technical manuals, reference and educational materials - are becoming
more and more pervasive. In
the medical field, electronic journals are the preferred form for many
doctors and scientists today. And journalists and writers now tend to
do their research online - subscribing to online libraries such as Electric
Library, which offers access to articles from leading newspapers, magazines,
books and periodicals from around the world.
Many IT
professionals subscribe to companies like Books 24x7, which provides
electronic access to the full content of top books, journals, and reports
related to today's technology. And
the great bastion of research and reference - the encyclopedia - has
not existed in print form for many years (although the Encyclopedia
Britannica recently announced it will be bringing out another print
edition).
Bookless
College
A number of educational institutions are considering dropping print
textbooks altogether. The University of Phoenix, for instance, is planning
to phase out traditional textbooks and become a "bookless college".
Many students returning to the University this fall won't be carrying
books in their backpacks at all. Instead, they will download digital
textbooks, multimedia simulations, and PowerPoint presentations on to
desktop PCs and portable eBook readers.
"Delivery
of course materials electronically will free us from the rigid ways
that students get their materials, which are lectures and textbooks,"
stated Dr. Adam Honea, Dean of the College of Information Systems and
Technology at the University of Phoenix.
Changing
the Foundations
So while the NY Times was correct in stating that eBooks (in the commercial
sense) have not lived up to the hype, it was wrong about ePublications
in general - which every day are replacing their print counterparts.
This being
the case, we at DCLnews editorial would ask mainstream media to take
a look at the real eBook revolution that's happening under our
noses. It may be a back door revolution, but it's changing the very
foundations of the way we learn and work.
DCLnews
Editorial
9/10/2001
Comments
and Correspondence to jshreeve@dclab.com
To read
the NY Times article which sparked this debate, go to...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/28/technology/ebusiness/28EBOO.html?searchpv=day07&
By
the time you get to read this, the NY Times may have archived the article.
If this is the case, you will have to pay a small fee to view it.
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